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BEING THE NARRATIVE OF BATTERY A OF THE 101st FIELD ARTILLERY
Page 145
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be towards the war? What sort of stuff were we expected to write in our letters home? Had we, as a class, any thoughts at all, or were we really living from meal to meal like animals? What had this great effort taught us anyway?
The answers were different; but one thing seemed plain. We had all found an implacable dislike, or prejudice perhaps, for the Germans. Not a reasonable abhorance of the military caste, or a logical distrust of the government, or disgust at the national ideal,— but an unreasoning, instinctive hatred of everything Boche. Also we had revised our idea of an offensive, and decided that, with all its disadvantages it had its good points, an admission never found in the best seller versions of warfare. In a quiet sector, life is fairly comfortable, with deep dugouts, trenches, and all that,—but you get stale. There is a nervous strain and various other unpleasantnesses, yet no results are ever apparent. You simply get stale. It begins to look like an endless job.—But in a drive it's different! You can see the results of your work. When you go into action over dead Boche horses which are still warm, you realize that you are advancing. You are doing what you enlisted to do, and doing it hard. There is a chance for the enthusiasm and dash of other wars—so hopelessly lost in the deadlock of trench warfare. The roads teeming with armed men, columns of artillery stretching for miles, fields alive with troops infected with the spirit of the advance, prisoners streaming back, great panoramas of open country, changing scenes, excitements, quick alarms; all these jumbled together produce a state
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